Volectricity.com - My hand-made blog

It doesn't matter if you do all the error checking in the world, or if you have the most beautiful graphics, if your site or application design isn't usable, it's not going to do well. Get input and advice on usability and user interface issues here.

Moderator: General Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
superdezign
DevNet Master
Posts: 4135
Joined: Sat Jan 20, 2007 11:06 pm

Volectricity.com - My hand-made blog

Post by superdezign »

I've been spending the past few weeks developing a blog, and then large chunks of each day posting in it. It's finally ready to go public. :D
Basically, it's going to end up being a library of tutorials and such, but it's also going to have a lot of articles. I didn't feel the need to add in "rants" or anything... Ranting is what the boards are for! :P They'd be a waste of space in the blog.

The way it was made was by starting big and then working downwards. I thought the process was different, so I felt the need to share it. ^_^
I had it completely online in under a week and where it is now after about two weeks.

Because it's hand-made, I'm sure some things are missing, so I'll be listening out for ideas, additions, and changes. Also, the design and everything was completely done by me, but I'm no designer, so any suggestions on the design are more than welcome!

There's a lot more I'd like to know too. AdSense tips... Surviving the "Digg Effect..." Getting spiders to index all of the pages... Where to put that damned RSS icon (I made my own ^_^)... And anything blog-related.


Oh! And I make it a point to draw something for every post that I do. This encourages me not to waste space with short, uninformative posts (like so many blogs annoy me with), and gets me some good drawing practice (and occasionally, just something to do).

www.Volectricity.com

BTW, looking forward to the DevNet Site Ring. :D
User avatar
Luke
The Ninja Space Mod
Posts: 6424
Joined: Fri Aug 05, 2005 1:53 pm
Location: Paradise, CA

Post by Luke »

Very nice! The site looks good. Just one problem. I tried to sign up, and I got the email, but when I click on the confirmation link, I'm shown this error:
Catchable fatal error: Object of class CSql could not be converted to string in /home/volect5/public_html/classes/user/user_abstract.php on line 26
EDIT: Oh I forgot to mention--the drawings look great! They add a lot of visual interest to your posts. I say don't stop doing that... it really sets you apart from other blogs. :)
User avatar
superdezign
DevNet Master
Posts: 4135
Joined: Sat Jan 20, 2007 11:06 pm

Post by superdezign »

Thanks :D

Damned confirmation... I though I missed an extra SQL object somewhere. I implemented the Registry pattern, and then had to find every constructor that explicitly sent objects through. I must have missed that one.

Error fixed. :D
And I could have sworn I turned error reporting off, but I'm happy that error showed or I may never have caught it.
User avatar
Oren
DevNet Resident
Posts: 1640
Joined: Fri Apr 07, 2006 5:13 am
Location: Israel

Post by Oren »

Well, very nice... 8)
I like the large text and the images too :wink:
User avatar
Luke
The Ninja Space Mod
Posts: 6424
Joined: Fri Aug 05, 2005 1:53 pm
Location: Paradise, CA

Post by Luke »

another word of advice... after I log in, redirect me either back to where I came from or back to the home page. Even though the green text is there saying "you are logged in", I still see the login form and believe it or not that WILL confuse people. :wink:

EDIT: and another - when I post a comment, I'm just taken to the top of that page and my comment is still in the box and there is no confirmation and I have no idea whether or not my comment went through... confusing.

EDIT: My profile doesn't work :( http://www.volectricity.com/user/profil ... =mc2design
User avatar
superdezign
DevNet Master
Posts: 4135
Joined: Sat Jan 20, 2007 11:06 pm

Post by superdezign »

Whoops! I actually commented out the redirection line because the server had some weird stuff going on with logins (turns out the server was going down and causing errors). I'll uncomment it. :D

It redirects you to your "profile" page, which is basically empty. It used to have a "currently viewing" thing in it, but I altered my database sessions to not include user IDs. I'm going to change it back later today. It was a nifty little feature. ^_^

Edit: The profile is actually http://www.volectricity.com/user/mc2design. Where'd you see the link that used profile.php? That file doesn't exist anymore. I've gotta kill that link.

Edit: And the comments... I used to call unset($_POST) on successful comment posts. I don't remember changing it, but I very well may have. I'll take a look at it. Thanks so much! ^_^
User avatar
Luke
The Ninja Space Mod
Posts: 6424
Joined: Fri Aug 05, 2005 1:53 pm
Location: Paradise, CA

Post by Luke »

Another word of advice - DO NOT SHOW PEOPLE'S EMAIL ADDRESSES. I can not stress that enough. Take off the email in the profile, and instead display their website URL (would you want your email address on the internet for spammers to scoop up?)

EDIT: The link I clicked on was in my comment. In my comment there is a link to my profile that doesn't work.

http://www.volectricity.com/general/art ... y_blog_v11

I accidentally double posted cuz I didn't know if I had already posted it or not.
User avatar
superdezign
DevNet Master
Posts: 4135
Joined: Sat Jan 20, 2007 11:06 pm

Post by superdezign »

Thanks for the tip. :D
I guess I should start finding something to be inside of user profiles now.

For now, I'll change the login redirection to homepage.

Edit: That's something I should allow... Comment deletion.
User avatar
Luke
The Ninja Space Mod
Posts: 6424
Joined: Fri Aug 05, 2005 1:53 pm
Location: Paradise, CA

Post by Luke »

You should also do some confirmation on posts too. As soon as your blog gets on the radar, you're going to be overwhelmed with comment spam. A good technique is to require that a user is registered, you only need to approve one of his/her comments and then from then on they can comment without approval. Or just approva all comments. It just becomes overwhelming without a good system in place. Even Wordpress can be kind of inefficient in comment moderation.
User avatar
superdezign
DevNet Master
Posts: 4135
Joined: Sat Jan 20, 2007 11:06 pm

Post by superdezign »

I didn't even think about spammers. That seems like a good system to put in place to avoid dozens of links to drugs and inappropriate websites. :D
User avatar
Luke
The Ninja Space Mod
Posts: 6424
Joined: Fri Aug 05, 2005 1:53 pm
Location: Paradise, CA

Post by Luke »

That's why I use Wordpress. There are plugins to handle all of those sorts of things. There is a plugin/service called Akizmet which consults a database of known spammers and filters out a good portion of comment spam.
User avatar
superdezign
DevNet Master
Posts: 4135
Joined: Sat Jan 20, 2007 11:06 pm

Post by superdezign »

I was thinking that it'd be a hard fix, but It didn't take that long. The hardest part of it was using radio buttons and check boxes since I rarely have purpose for them, so I had to write some test forms first.

Thanks a lot for the tips on the comments. I actually kind of threw them in there because "every blog needs comments" (in the words of the ProBlogger guys) and I didn't even consider the usability side of it. Once it gets arranged into it own class (currently a part of the posts), maybe I'll "Ajaxify" it so that the submission is done without reloading the page, then jumping back down to the form. Sort of like the way Facebook does wall posts.
Post Reply